Abstract
In this chapter, I will suggest a renewed approach to video game analysis. I will use a seemingly paradoxical case of a video game that has never been released in order to critique some of the approaches used so far in game studies. I will then propose an approach grounded in semiotic theory. What I propose is a study of games not based on the attempt to analyze their occurrence or material existence. Rather, I suggest we consider how a video game ‘lives’ in a social context, how it is commented upon, talked or written about. This approach involves the external texts, paratexts and references evoked by a video game. I will also show how game analysis so far has often done something similar to what I am proposing, but pretending to go in a different direction in the attempt to establish a new epistemology. I suggest that a desire to differentiate game theory and video games from previous experiences is not a fruitful path. It is much more interesting to see to which extent video games and a study of gaming can be similar to other objects and theoretical approaches.
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Notes
- 1.
A machinima ‘is a collection of associated production techniques whereby computer-generated machinery (CGI) is rendered using real-time, interactive 3-D engines instead of professional 3-D animation software. Engines from first-person shooter and role-playing simulation videogames are typically used’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinima. Accessed 7 Feb 2011).
- 2.
Probably the most interesting and famous case is the channel Angry Video Game Nerd (http://www.youtube.com/user/JamesNintendoNerd?ob=1. Accessed 7 Feb 2011).
- 3.
The popularity of this story has encouraged some Cheetahmen fanatics to emulate the game. From the few available cartridges, a group of NES fans was able to get and distribute a very rare (but more easily accessible than before) ROM image. Saying that ‘nobody ever played it’ is thus not completely true, but the emulated version is still played by a very minority of all those who discuss, talk and make any kind of reference to the game.
- 4.
The video can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H2QpaHjO-Q Accessed 7 Feb 2011). It is not necessarily the very first one but is the most complete and exhaustive.
- 5.
In Genette’s Introducion à l’architext (1979), the transtextuality is called ‘paratextuality’ (‘because there is not, so far, a more precise word’, as the author comments). In Genette (1982), paratextuality becomes a category of transtextuality. In this work, we will adopt the more detailed terminology used by Genette (1982).
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
According to Wikipedia, ‘shoot’em up’ is a game ‘in which the player controls a vehicle or character and fights large numbers of enemies with shooting attacks. The style of the game may range from cute to serious, from fantasy and science fiction to historic settings’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot_%27em_up. Accessed 7 Feb 2011).
- 9.
A platform is ‘a videogame genre characterized by jumping to and from suspended platforms or over obstacles. It must be possible to control these jumps and to fall from platforms or miss jumps’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_game. Accessed 7 Feb 2011).
- 10.
A shooter is a game that ‘focuses on the actions of the avatar using some sort of weapon. Usually this weapon is a gun or some other long-range weapon’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooter_game. Accessed 7 Feb 2011).
- 11.
Louis Marin used the term ‘archi-text’ much earlier than these two authors, to name the ‘text from where every other text comes from, its source and environment where to install itself’ (Pour une theorie du texte parabolique, in Le Recit Evangelique, Biblioteque des sciences religieuses, 1974). Genette discusses the use of the same word in his own terminology and points out that what is described by Marin is more similar to what he calls a hypotext.
- 12.
Original text: ‘La relazione semiotica è dunque una legge che correla un antecedente tipo a un conseguente tipo. […] Il fatto che la relazione semiotica intercorra tra tipi fa si che essa sia indipendente dal canale o medium materiale in cui, o attraverso cui, vengono prodotte e veicolate le sue occorrenze corrispondenti. […] Il segno stoico è un incorporale, ed è la relazione di implicazione tra due proposizioni (“se c’è fumo allora c’è fuoco”). […] Il segno non è dato dal fatto che questo fumo mi rinvii a quel fuoco: la classe generale delle occorrenze riconoscibili come fumo rinvia alla classe generale delle occorrenze definibili come fuoco. La relazione intercorre tra tipi e non tra occorrenze’.
- 13.
Original text: ‘Il segno serve anche per mentire circa gli stati del mondo’.
- 14.
- 15.
Daniel Martin Feige has a similar point while arguing about video games as works of art. The artistic value of a text cannot be determined by the support, and the very distinction between media is established on arbitrary properties (see Feige, Chap. 6).
- 16.
Later, the debate tried to find a compromise (see Tosca 2003). Later, Juul introduced a study of fictional elements in gaming, although he states that ‘it is possible to discuss rules mostly without mentioning fiction; [however] it is not possible to deal with fiction in games without discussing rules’ (Juul 2005, 121).
- 17.
The examples provided by Aarseth of a semiotic approach to cybertexts all share a misunderstanding. The ideas by J. David Bolter, or Jens F. Jensen, as described by Aarseth, stating that an interpretation process can be found in a computer are indeed quite difficult to accept, as an interpretation process that happens in a mechanical system can easily be reduced to a stimulus-response scheme. Such a communication process lacks a difference between the expression and the content, so does not start any semiotic process. Indeed, it is a process that happens below the threshold of semiosis (Eco 1975). It is easy to agree with Aarseth’s criticism of these studies, but the conclusion, that a semiotic theory has nothing else to say, is quite puzzling: the examples used were failing attempts to study a machine process with a semiotic approach, but they do not exhaust the full potentialities of the method. If those studies misunderstood the basic premises of a semiotic theory, it is their weakness, not of the theory as a whole.
- 18.
On the same topic, see Bayard (2007).
- 19.
The publication of a special issue about video game theory by the Italian Association of Semiotic Studies (AISS) is significant from this perspective (see Compagno and Coppock 2009).
- 20.
The video game was finally published in 2011, two years after the submission of this paper.
References
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Gameography
Cheetahmen 2 (2011). Active Enterprises (Dev.).
Death Race. (1976). Exidy (Dev./Pub.)
Duke Nukem Forever (2011). 3D Realms (Dev.).
Half Life. (1998). Valve (Dev.); EA Games (Pub.).
Super Mario Bros. (1985). Nintendo Creative Department/Shigeru Miyamoto (Dev.); Nintendo (Pub.).
Tetris. (1984). Alexey Pazhitnov (Dev.); Andromeda Software (Pub.).
The Cheetahmen. (1991). Active Enterprises (Dev./Pub.)
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. (1998). Nintendo EAD (Dev.); Nintendo (Pub.).
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Ruffino, P. (2012). A Theory of Non-existent Video Games: Semiotic and Video Game Theory. In: Fromme, J., Unger, A. (eds) Computer Games and New Media Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2777-9_7
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